These are a few of my favorited things...

Just curious about something... when someone answers an AskMe question and it gets marked as one of the best answers, shouldn't that also count for them as being favorited by someone? Or... no?
posted by miss lynnster to feature requests at 7:35 PM (38 comments total) 1 user marked this as a favorite

Doesn't ring for me. Just because I can do a bit of Googling and come up with a solution doesn't mean it was a favorite. YMMV.
posted by FlamingBore at 7:40 PM on March 20, 2007

No

Please close now ;)
posted by caddis at 7:41 PM on March 20, 2007

Favorites aren't popularity based (and neither are best answers). They're a personal record of your relationship to the site.

Best answers are just that.

So, they're different metrics and have no relation to each other.

Or that's how I see it.

(I hope this gets favorited.)
posted by OmieWise at 7:42 PM on March 20, 2007 [6 favorites]

Sorry. I was just thinking about it and I don't know why but I was curious so I thought I'd ask. Feel free to flag & close this if you want.
posted by miss lynnster at 7:45 PM on March 20, 2007

Also I think I might not have been clear. I guess maybe I meant that Best Answers don't show up in people's profiles & that might be cool if they did. I guess I figured maybe they might go under favorites.
posted by miss lynnster at 7:47 PM on March 20, 2007

They shouldn't be favorited by a particular user. They should be favorited by reality.
posted by smackfu at 7:47 PM on March 20, 2007 [1 favorite]

They're solving different problems. Best Answer is an indicator to people reading the question that a) there is some sort of answer to the question and b) the Best marked one is likely one that the asker approved of, or that hey liked, or that he solution workd.

Favorites are used for all sorts of things from personal bookmarks to "that was a funny joke" to "I'll have to read this later"

There's no reason to confuse the two and we've always been pretty set against having any sort of a Best Answer ranking here for a number of reasons.
posted by jessamyn at 7:47 PM on March 20, 2007

Ok, cool. Maybe I should've e-mailed the question. Oh well.
posted by miss lynnster at 7:53 PM on March 20, 2007

we've always been pretty set against having any sort of a Best Answer ranking here

Which just kills me because I think it would be the A-No. 1 way to encourage the good stuff and keep the Super MeFi's super-active. When there's a medical answer, I want to see ikkyu2's post ranked high so people know ikkyu2 is the bomb diggity. That sort of thing.
posted by frogan at 7:57 PM on March 20, 2007

Also, they should be favored posts, like nations and trading status.
posted by boo_radley at 8:07 PM on March 20, 2007 [1 favorite]

I want to see ikkyu2's post ranked high so people know ikkyu2 is the bomb diggity.

But the "best answer" mark is ranking enough, no?

And I think a running tally of how many best answers a user has would quickly become bad news.
posted by chococat at 8:09 PM on March 20, 2007 [1 favorite]

Yes. It would. Don't ask me how I know.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 8:18 PM on March 20, 2007 [1 favorite]

frogan writes "I think it would be the A-No. 1 way to encourage the good stuff and keep the Super MeFi's super-active. "

It would encourage something all right but doubt it would be good answers.
posted by Mitheral at 8:19 PM on March 20, 2007 [2 favorites]

I've rarely found that I'm able to choose a 'best answer'. It's the very nature of many questions that you have no idea what the best answer might be, even after you're given a list of answers. Which is why you ask them in the first place. Or many of the question I ask, at least.

What were we talking about?
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 8:56 PM on March 20, 2007

"They should be favorited by reality."

Oh, yeah, that's why I had a plus sign tattooed on the back of my neck. I thought I was just really drunk, but now I remember my motivation.
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 9:30 PM on March 20, 2007 [1 favorite]

Actually, now that you mention it there are questions I've asked where I haven't even picked best answers. Sometimes it's not easy to figure out immediately.
posted by miss lynnster at 10:14 PM on March 20, 2007

Sometimes it's not easy to figure out immediately.

And, my point being, often not possible to figure out at all.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 10:21 PM on March 20, 2007

When there's a medical answer, I want to see ikkyu2's post ranked high so people know ikkyu2 is the bomb diggity.

Favorite it and move on.
posted by staggernation at 10:37 PM on March 20, 2007

I wish Favorites were called Bookmarks or something like that. As it is, people use them to vote for arguments that they agree with, endorse attacks on other users they dislike, rank standing in the community, etc. That's not what they're there for.

Vote for this comment if you agree!
posted by painquale at 11:00 PM on March 20, 2007 [6 favorites]

Vote for this comment if you agree!

Vote for this comment if you'd like me to slowly throttle painquale until he turns purple.

(Actually I used to agree about the Bookmarks nomenclature, and said so, about 14 million freaking times, but I think I've come around to Favorites, because it opens up the flexibility of the system for people to use without thinking much about it in any way they see fit.)
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 11:12 PM on March 20, 2007 [1 favorite]

The race is on! Go team painquale!

I'm gonna lose so bad
posted by painquale at 11:33 PM on March 20, 2007

Note: no actual throttling is either implied or promised. Offer void where prohibited by law. Do not mark favorites while using medication.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 11:41 PM on March 20, 2007

Dear admins,

I wrote a great answer to a question but the user did not mark it as best answer [instead picking an obviously incorrect one]. I emailed them but got no response. Can you please mark my answer as best, as I'm sure you will agree it deserves it and will give me 100 best answers!!!
posted by meech at 12:32 AM on March 21, 2007

Yes, it is a bummer not to get your propers. That's an issue for Askme. Try yoga and cut down on caffeine. Also you can make a sheet to write hash marks on, so you know how best you really are.
posted by Ambrosia Voyeur at 1:29 AM on March 21, 2007

If you're really interested, you can click on a member's number of askme answers, and then quickly scan through them. Best answers have a check mark next to them. Even if you don't want to look through many many pages, it'll give you a rough idea of how many bests per answer that member's had lately.
posted by lampoil at 5:12 AM on March 21, 2007

What I think would be really cool is some correlation between best answers and tags. Who are our subject-area experts?

Why this metric adds value: an uninformed querant (newish or just outside their usual areas of interest) could use this information to judge answers. It's hard to judge comments if you don't know the subject (the inexperienced are so inexperienced, they don't know that they're inexperienced problem). If your peers, however, have judged certain commentors as reliable and informative when answering questions with a certain tag cloud, would not that be good information to know?
posted by bonehead at 6:36 AM on March 21, 2007

They should be favorited by reality.

He/she doesn't seem to use favourites much.
posted by Johnny Assay at 7:19 AM on March 21, 2007

I think it would be the A-No. 1 way to encourage the good stuff

it brings out the sad pathetic people whos egos depend on how many other people pay attention to them. if youre more interested in hearing hearing yourself be impressive (note: it sounds like mundane dribble to the rest of us) you shouldnt even be trying to contribute, i dont care how clever you are. we shouldnt encourage this type self-obsessed narciccistic whoring. god knows theres enough of it already. in fact what we should be working on is ways to get those people to talk less
posted by petsounds at 7:25 AM on March 21, 2007

for starters i'll be quiet
posted by petsounds at 7:26 AM on March 21, 2007 [1 favorite]

Well, the person asking a question is probably non-knowledgeable on the topic (otherwise, they wouldn't need to ask), so is the person least qualified to rank an answerers expertise, so there's no point in correlating best answers with tags, you just get the user who is best at convincing people who are mostly ignorant about a topic.
posted by signal at 7:34 AM on March 21, 2007

That was in response to bonehead.
posted by signal at 7:34 AM on March 21, 2007

bonehead wrote: "What I think would be really cool is some correlation between best answers and tags. Who are our subject-area experts?"

I don't know how it will be done, but "reputation by topic" is definitely looming on the horizon.
posted by bru at 7:36 AM on March 21, 2007

"Best Answers don't show up in people's profiles & that might be cool if they did. "

Despite being someone with a fair number of "best answers" to my name, I'm of the apparent minority that believes Metafilter needs fewer scoreboards, not more of them. The "vote for me" aspect of the favorites feature is something I already find irritating; doubly so in Ask which really oughtn't succumb to the various cults of personality. Let's not add more scoreboards to Ask.
posted by majick at 7:41 AM on March 21, 2007

That's a good point, signal but I'm not so sure that that would be a big problem. Marking a poor, but convincing may happen sometimes, but committed and knowledgeable posters do tend to bubble to the top. People who've read askme for a while know that biscotti's advice, for example, should be taken seriously whenever a pet or vet question comes up.

The problem is that casual posters don't know that, they don't read ask (or ask for that class of question) often enough. Some way of hinting that now informal knowledge to the original poster would be really valuable, I think.
posted by bonehead at 8:58 AM on March 21, 2007

The only subject-matter expert I've caught on to so far is ikkyu2, but it's nice to know that biscotti's the one to watch for pet advice. I'd be curious to see what other users you guys would nominate as experts, and for what type of question.
posted by vytae at 11:39 AM on March 21, 2007

These are a few of my favorited things... March 20, 2007 7:35 PM Subscribe

These are a few of my favorited things...
March 20, 2007 7:35 PM Subscribe